Shawnee County 911 calls could change

TOPEKA (KSNT)- Shawnee County commissioners plan to vote on a program that could change how 911 calls are fielded.

911 calls have a wide range of resources needed, and in the past valuable resources have been sent to a caller’s location, when they were needed more somewhere else.

The Nurse Navigation Program changes that. The program was created by the American Medical Response to give everyone calling 911 the proper care. If the call is determined a lower equity call, meaning a lower-tiered emergency, such as illness or non-life-threatening injuries, then they will be put in touch with a nurse navigator to walk them through the best steps for their care.

“Usually within 3 questions, is this a true EMS emergency response? Is someone having a heart attack? Is someone having a stroke? Is someone bleeding out? So typically that takes less than 30 seconds, if it is a lower equity call, that takes about 90 seconds,” said Regional director of Global Medical Response Jon Atrim.

The program will be put in place to save resources like emergency vehicles.

“They’ll still be sending fire trucks on certain calls, but on the nurse navigation calls, those calls we would not have to send them,” said Nelson Casteel from Shawnee County Emergency Management

AMR believes that by implementing this program, they wouldn’t be lessening service to others, but actually improving it to some people.

“I don’t think we are lessening the service, in fact, I think we are going to be improving the services, especially to some of these underserved communities that rely on the ambulance and the ER as their primary healthcare,” said Atrim.

Initiating this program seems necessary to AMR officials.

“When you’re looking at 30,000 calls and roughly 6-8,000 of them are those low equity calls it’s a pretty significant number,” said Atrim.

The current plan is for the Shawnee County Commissioners to vote on whether to install the program or not at this Thursday’s meeting at 9 a.m.